Take Me Under

A burning hot sensation began to cross my cheek as I waited in the creaky bed surrounded by the white walls. I hated these walls; they reminded me of nothing, blank, barren nothing. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to feel nothing; would it make you feel more happy or sad? There would be no pain, or sadness, or horror, just nothing.

I was seriously going to kill the beeping heart monitor next to the patient’s bed next to mine. It reminded me of a clock, a clock that counted down each minute, each second that my life began to disappear. I’ve always thought that you should live in the moment. You should always be doing something, always living your life, and now this stupid place had begun to take that away from me. I hated it even more.

I looked down at the hospital gown that clung to me uncomfortably, and the beautiful legs I couldn’t feel. I tried, like I’ve done every day before, to move them, but they wouldn’t budge. I focused on just moving my right leg, my toes, my big toe, but not even it would respond to my brain bouncing back and forth commanding it to move.

My mom had always said that God gave us our bodies to keep our souls here on Earth. It had never really occurred to me until now how amazing the human body works. It gives us constant protection. Whenever we get injured our body knows how to heal itself, and that it needs to be protected. We have organ after organ maintaining and supporting one another. My body, however, failed me this time. This time there was nothing my brain or skin could heal, it had to be fixed by someone else’s body, their brain, someone who was in complete function. Someone not like me.

Another tear began to roll down my face as I kept commanding my legs to move, and the more I tried the sadder it made me feel. It had happened so fast. It had happened to soon.

Just all of one week ago I was on my uncle’s boat as he taught P.J how to drive it. P.J, my best friend in the whole world, was all right. He was all right because he didn’t feel anything, he didn’t know. He was dead.

I closed my eyes and leaned back listening to the fluid sound of each ticking beat. I could still feel the crisp air pushing against me, the smell of salt and fish. The ocean sprayed me as I stood at the head of the boat, feeling like the king of the world, like Leonardo DeCaprio in the Titanic, and my boat went down too.

P.J and my Uncle Jack were up in the control tower. I looked up covering my hands over my eyes to block out the sunny day, seeing a sight worth bottling up and keeping forever. P.J’s brown hair fell in front of his eyes as Uncle Jack, who really did look like a sailor, showed him how to pilot the boat. P.J’s light skin gleamed through the window compared to Uncle Jack’s dark, old withered self.

I stopped thinking after that, I didn’t want to think, and I didn’t want to know. I leaned my head as far down as I could making it capable to feel the soft pillow underneath. My blond hair was gone, nothing more than the skin on my head.

I was lucky to be a live, I was lucky that I survived, but I felt so depressed because P.J had to go. P.J with his large heart and wide smile would never be seen again.

Uncle Jack was all right. Uncle Jack wasn’t dead. Uncle Jack was in the bed next to mine, fast asleep as I listened to his body working to keep him alive. My body was working too, but my body apparently wasn’t doing a good job of it.

The doctors said if they didn’t act soon I would be gone, really gone. I would be with P.J. I wanted to be with P.J, but I wanted to live to see the day I could see my baby sister, Jessica, go to her first swim meet, or watch her come back home laughing from spending time with her friends. I wanted to see the world, I wanted to live my life with no if, ands, or buts intended.

The walls felt to bright to me, to happy to be in such a place that made people miserable. I wanted to be outside in the rain, the rain I couldn’t really hear because of Uncle Jack’s heart monitor. I knew it was raining though, I could smell it, the smell of rust. Jessica always told me it was the smell of blood; little did she know that it was really the smell of iron.

I wanted to run outside and let the rain kiss me. I wanted it to drip down my clothes and laugh with me, then disappear.

“Good morning Lucas,” Nurse Hannah stated as she walked in with her clip board.

“Good morning Hannah,” I sighed. It wasn’t true.

Nurse Hannah wasn’t my favorite nurse compared to the others. She was tighter, and had a mean looking face. Her hair was tied back as tight as it could go, and her narrow cheek bones pressed on her face to tight. Unlike other nurses, like Nurse Sherry or Nurse Bella, she seemed to be focused too much in work. She reminded me of Lizzy.

I wanted to see Lizzy so bad I could almost feel the pain aching through my chest as Nurse Hannah checked my tubes and charts. I could almost hear Lizzy laughing next to me in Science the last time I saw her before summer had started.

I hadn’t heard from her since before the accident, before my phone wasn’t lying on the bottom of the ocean. I had talked to her every day, yet I never had the guts to ask her out. Her light brown hair and green eyes would just barely peek up at me when she would look up from the text book she was reading, or the instructions she was carrying out.

I wondered if she thought I had lost interest in her, or maybe she saw me on the news being carried away in a helicopter covered with blood and water, seconds after I had almost drowned.

“Well Lucas, the operation will take place in a few minutes, how do you feel?” Nurse Hannah asked as she wrote something down on her clip board.

“Fine,” I lied.

“Well, things are looking good, everything should run fine,” she falsely smiled. I knew it was a lie, because I all ready knew my chances.

If they didn’t do the operation I wouldn’t just be able to feel from the waist down ever again, but it would most likely cause a tumor in my brain. If we didn’t do the operation at least I would be able to live, one way or another. There was a fifty - fifty chance the operation wouldn’t succeed, and I would be permanently gone.

She left after, leaving me to my thoughts. I had a few minutes, whether they were really my first or my last. What would you think about if you only had a few minutes left of reassurance that things were going to be ok?

I thought of my first day of kindergarten when I first met P.J. I thought of my first swim meet, and I had won, and how I always would. I thought of laying on the beach letting the sun warm my body and feeling the coarse sand on my back. I thought of the first time I met Lizzy in second grade, how I had accidentally spilled glue on her, and how she ran into me at recess.

I imagined the three of us, Lizzy, P.J, and me, sitting on the rocky cliffs above the beautiful glimmering sea with one another. I tried not to think of how I didn’t want Lizzy to see me this way, disabled and broken.

I had wires and tubes connected to me everywhere. I was bruised in just about every place possible. I looked like a monster, a freak.

“Here you go sweety,” Nurse Hannah gleamed after returning. An injection needle was held in her boney hands.

“Your parents wanted me to tell you that they loved you,” Nurse Hannah stated as she handed me her clipboard to hang on to.

My parents were outside, my mom probably crying and my dad trying to comfort her. They had cried over me about twenty minutes ago before Nurse Hannah drove them out to give me peace.

My whole life, or at least ever since Jessie was born, I served as my sister’s protector. My mom dressed her up in pretty dresses and my dad bought her anything she wanted. They even gave her the most beautiful name they could find, Jessica Jay Johnson. Now though, they seemed to pay a whole lot more attention to me as they watched me wither in pain.

“Don’t worry darling, everything is going to be all right,” were the last words I heard as Nurse Hannah injected the needle into one of the arteries on my arm.

I didn’t feel much at first, but a few seconds passed and I slowly saw the world beginning to fade. The last thing I saw were the white walls shining to bright for me to see, and the shape of a few new figures entering the room to take me away.

I saw Lizzy laughing so hard her face started to turn red. I saw little Jessie running through the green field of our backyard heading towards me so I could scoop her up and twirl her into a spin. I saw Uncle Jack and P.J standing up in the control tower, smiling at a joke I didn’t hear. I saw a boat speeding our way, cutting through the water heading towards our boat. It seemed as everything was running in slow motion as it hit the control tower getting stuck on the right side below P.J where the boat split in half and the pole behind me fell off and hit my legs. It took me down where I felt the gut wrenching pain of my legs snapping and the feeling of the wooden floor smack against my head as I slid down towards the icy water.

It wasn’t until the very last millisecond that I remembered that that had already happened, and I felt nothing what so ever, like the white walls of my room.

The last thing I saw was the whiteness of the outside world, and the beating of the heart monitor ticking off the last seconds I had before I was taken under by the sound of P.J telling me how it was a great day to take the boat out for a ride.

P.J was gone. The boat was gone. The ability to swim was gone. Everything that had once been my everything was gone.

So it didn’t really bother me, when I never saw the white room again.

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